They have been working with Eneco, a \u2018sustainable energy supplier\u2019 operating in the Netherlands, for several years. Their goal was to operate all NS trains on electricity produced by wind turbines by January 2018. “So we in fact reached our goal a year earlier than planned,” spokesman Ton Boon told AFP. 2015 was a record year for the country\u2019s wind industry \u2013 according to the Global Wind Energy Council, turbines capable of generating 586 MW of electricity were installed between January and December. In 2016, Dutch wind hit the headlines again, when a 700 MW offshore windfarm near the town of Borssele became the most \u2018cost-effective\u2019 in the world. The construction of these wind farms \u2013 along with others in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Finland \u2013 helped NS and Eneco to hit their target so far ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And given that the company carries 600,000 people per day, the amount of electricity they need isn\u2019t trivial \u2013 around 1.2 billion kWh of electricity a year. That would power a large proportion of all of the households in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
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But if you\u2019re reading this and thinking \u201cHow can trains run on electricity?\u201d, fear not. I\u2019ve included a mini-excerpt from my recent book, Science and the City, to explain:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cElectric locomotives don\u2019t have conventional \u2018engines\u2019. Rather they act like a component in an electric circuit. \u00a0Rail networks source this electricity from the grid, and just like for our homes, it\u2019s transmitted to them via high-voltage lines. Once it\u2019s in the network, there are three main options for getting the electricity to the trains themselves:<\/p>\n
\u2022On-board energy storage systems, such as batteries;<\/p>\n
\u2022An overhead wire that the train connects to; or<\/p>\n
\u2022An extra \u2018live\u2019 rail that has direct current flowing through it at all times.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve probably noticed at least one of these options on your rail journeys. Overhead wires are best suited to tram and intercity services, whereas the more compact \u2018third rail\u2019 option is preferred for underground trains. The role of the third rail is to ensure that the electricity is always directly available, so it\u2019s installed alongside, or in between, the pair of running rails.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Conductor rails carry lower voltages than overhead wires, although \u2018low\u2019 is a relative concept. London Underground\u2019s system provides 600V of direct current to their conductor rails, still enough to be potentially lethal. In addition, the use of conductor rails sets a speed limit on trains of about 160kph (100mph) \u2013 above this, the metal contact blocks \u00a0can lose contact with the rail and result in a drop in power. The pickup shoes do occasionally lose contact anyway, albeit very briefly, at track junctions. This is the cause of the very bright, blue-white spark you sometimes see near the third rail, as well as flickering carriage lights. For high-speed trains, overhead wires are the better choice.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
However the electricity is delivered to the train, once it\u2019s there, it is used to power lights, and air-conditioning, as well as the traction motors, which are what turn the train\u2019s wheels. Electric trains also use regenerative braking, similar to what\u2019s found in hybrid and electric cars. These systems are found on underground trains in Los Angeles, Auckland and Buenos Aires, among others. By using the \u2018brake\u2019 to change the connections on a train\u2019s motors, they stop turning the wheels, slowing the train, and instead produce electricity that can be used elsewhere.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In all cases, this regenerated electricity can be returned to the power line via the conductor rail. How it then gets used depends on the city we\u2019re in. If the train line is a busy one, with small gaps between scheduled trains, the electricity produced by one helps to power the very next one that comes along. If it\u2019s a less busy line, some of the electricity is stored in batteries on the train. \u00a0The US city of Philadelphia has taken regenerative braking to a new level though. Instead of trains recovering energy for their own use, any excess power is directed to a centralized bank of lithium-ion batteries. Once stored, this electricity can be sold to the main power grid, helping the city to top up peak demand, and earning the train company money in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Because they\u2019re just one part of a wider grid, most train operators use electricity from a mix of different sources \u2013 coal-fired generators, nuclear plants, hydropower\u2026 or, in the case of Nederlandse Spoorwegen, exclusively from wind turbines. They say that this makes them the first rail company in the world that runs it fleet entirely on renewable energy. If that\u2019s the case, it marks a major turning point in the story of renewables.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Just an FYI, this official infographic shows that the scheme saves 1.4 billion kWh of electricity, which they say is the same as what\u2019s used by ALL of Amsterdam\u2019s residents. I struggled to find reliable figures to back that up, so I didn\u2019t want to repeat the claim here. The only way we could get close would be to take this measure of the city\u2019s population (813, 562) and this value for electricity consumption per person (1800 kWh). That\u2019d give us a consumption figure for the city of around 1.5 billion kWh.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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By Laurie WinklessWorld-famous for their picturesque windmills, the Netherlands has always had a love affair with wind energy. While it was originally used to pump\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":18782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","_ms_company":[]},"categories":[7295],"tags":[7625,919,918,920,777],"class_list":["post-18035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genel","tag-dutch-trains","tag-electricity","tag-eneco","tag-finland","tag-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18201,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18035\/revisions\/18201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}